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Ian McDiarmid excels as Britain’s foreign secretary caught in the chain of events leading up to the First World War

37 Days BBC Two****

If democracy were to enter foreign policy there would be “bodies everywhere” remarked the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, in the first episode of 37 Days. The problem of the Balkans in the summer of 1914 was left instead to what he called “the charmed circle”. There were bodies soon enough: 16 million in four years.

The mini-series 37 Days is a clear and often brilliant dramatisation by Mark Hayhurst of the failure of diplomacy over that long month between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Britain’s declaration of war on August 4. Hayhurst